The Vatican Curia, the pope’s top team of bureaucrats, is a ‘brick wall’ against the adoption of measures to ensure that all Catholic bishops implement effective child safeguarding measures – according to Marie Collins, the Dublin survivor of clerical abuse at the age of thirteen.  She has revealed this to Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times.  (Feb. 15th – see below.)

Could this be ‘crunch time’ for Marie’s continued membership of the papal commission?    Marie says she was “horrified, absolutely horrified” to hear that training guidelines issued for bishops by the Vatican last week advised that it was not necessarily the duty of a bishop to report instances of clerical abuse to the civil authorities. “It couldn’t be further from best practice if you tried to. It’s the moral duty of any church leader to report.”

Appointed by Pope Francis to his advisory commission for the protection of minors in March 2014, Marie has told the Irish Times that at a recent meeting with the pope she had “made my concerns known … I am waiting to see what comes of it”.

For the full Irish Times article, click here.